The AP's Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman broke an extraordinary story today about the NYPD's …
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Sheikh Reda Shata, an Egyptian-born cleric who ran a Brooklyn mosque, was identified by the NYPD as a "Tier One threat potential," for no apparent reason other than that he was an Egyptian-born cleric who ran a Brooklyn mosque. So they spied on him, despite the fact that he had never been convicted, charged, or suspected of anything approaching a crime. In fact, he actively supported local and federal law enforcement and counterterrorism efforts. Not good enough.

During his time at the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge since 2002, he welcomed FBI agents to his mosque to speak to Muslims, invited NYPD officers for breakfast and threw parties for officers who were leaving the precinct. As police secretly watched Shata in 2006, he had breakfast and dinner with Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion and was invited to meet with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Shata recalls.

If they're singling out people like Shata for surveillance, it means that there are literally no Muslims, anywhere, that the NYPD doesn't automatically assume to be a potential threat. Everyone is suspect.